Droning about Pakistan

Sometimes I wish I were not a news junkie and, more than that, I wish that I had no interest at all in whatever was happening anywhere on the planet.  For one, despite my best attempts to stay focused on my own work and life, I end up blogging like this!  For another, it is damn depressing.

I check BBC for a news update after my coffee, breakfast and shower, and I read this report on Hillary Clinton's Pakistan trip:

it would be hard to imagine a more hostile and sceptical audience for a US secretary of state.

Mrs Clinton acknowledged there was what she called a trust deficit towards the United States in Pakistan because of past policies.

But she said she was working to change that by reaching out to ordinary Pakistanis.

And she flatly refused to discuss one of the major issues that the "ordinary Pakistanis" have with the US: the use of Predator drones.  Now, I could have just stopped with this; no, I had to read more stuff and get depressed and pissed off.  Over at Foreign Policy's AfPak channel, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedermann provide this chart and write:

The number of civilian deaths caused by the drones is an important issue, because in the charged political atmosphere of today's Pakistan, where anti-Americanism is rampant, the drone program is a particular cause of anger among those who see it as an infringement on Pakistan's sovereignty. A Gallup poll in August found that only 9 percent of Pakistanis favored the strikes, and two-thirds opposed them.
And, according to Philip Alston, a U.N. human rights investigator, the use of drones to carry out targeted assassinations that end up killing civilians may well violate international law.
On Tuesday at a news conference in New York, Alston publicly warned that unless the Obama administration explains what the legal basis is for selecting the individuals targeted by drone attacks, "it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law."

Meanwhile, we are just about a week away from the second round of elections in Afghanistan.  Today is Friday--I am willing to bet that the militants are spending the weekend plotting their next violent attacks.  Crap, I should have just slept through today!!!